Tony Behun was a typical eleven-year-old boy. As do many boys
his age, he enjoyed riding his motorbike in the fields around
his hometown of Osceola Mills, Pennsylvania.

But then Tony mysteriously died.

By all accounts a healthy child, Tony suddenly contracted an
illness characterized by skin lesions, fever and respiratory problems.
The illness baffled doctors, who treated him as if he were suffering
from a blood infection. Doctors were unable to save Tony and he
died from kidney failure after just four days.1

Although Tony's 1994 death was puzzling at the time, a number
of scientists - including some employed by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) - believe they now know the source of Tony's illness.
Furthermore, they believe that the EPA may ultimately be responsible
not only for Tony's tragic death but for other deaths and illnesses
similar to Tony's.

Just before he became ill, Tony rode his motorbike through
a mine reclamation field where a type of municipal waste sludge
was being dumped. Municipal waste sludge consists of human feces,
hospital waste and various chemicals. After ocean dumping of sludge
was outlawed, the EPA ordered in 1993 that municipal sludge be
dumped on land. The EPA argues that the sludge, officially labeled
as Class B sludge, can be used by farmers as a fertilizer because
it is made safe through a chemical treatment process.2

Or is it?

In 1994, the same year Tony died, numerous EPA research scientists
warned that the agency's 503 Sludge Rule regulating the dumping
policy was so scientifically flawed that it may pose unacceptable
risks to public health and the environment.3 Even EPA's Inspector
General released a report stating, "Accordingly, while EPA
promotes land application (of sludge), EPA cannot assure the public
that current land application practices are protective of human
health and the environment."4 A 1992 University of Arizona
study found "significant numbers of pathogens exist in sludge
even after stabilization and treatment."5 EPA scientist Dr.
David Lewis believes that toxic fumes produced by chemically-treated
sludge could be what killed Tony and another young man, Shayne
Conner of Greenland, New Hampshire.6

Shayne, 26, went to bed on Thanksgiving night 1995 in seemingly
good health only to wake up gasping for breath with symptoms eerily
similar to Tony Behun's. And as in Tony's case, baffled doctors
were unable to save Shayne. Other members of Shayne's family and
neighbors in Greenland also experienced difficult-to-treat and
unexplained diseases, all of which started after a contractor
began dumping Class B sludge from municipal waste treatment plants
on a nearby field.7

What is most scandalous about these tragic deaths is that EPA
officials not only ignore warnings about Class B sludge from their
own scientists but have persecuted dissenting scientists, such
as Dr. Lewis and other critics. For instance, Dr. Alan Rubin,
an EPA scientist and advocate of the sludge policy, responded
to California dairy farmer Jane Beswick's public denunciation
of Class B sludge as a fertilizer by mailing her hostile and threatening
letters urging her to keep quiet. In one letter he wrote, "Jane,
ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee!"8

Dr. Lewis says that the EPA harassed him and smeared his reputation
because of his strong criticism of the agency's disregard of science
in drafting sludge-related regulations.9 Ironically though, the
EPA later was forced to give Dr. Lewis an award for an article
he published in Nature magazine in October 1999 in which he criticized
the EPA's sludge policy. The EPA retaliated against Dr. Lewis's
supervisor, Dr. Rose Russo, for allowing Lewis to publish the
embarrassing article by removing her from the EPA lab she had
headed for 16 years. But EPA backed down after congressional criticism
of the action and a finding by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration that the EPA's attempted reassignment of Russo
was discriminatory.10

Still, EPA officials such as Dr. Rubin who authorized the policy
refuse to admit they were wrong and continue to back the dumping
of the controversial Class B sludge. Says Dr. Lewis, "It's
a worse case scenario of what EPA too often does: Implement regulatory
policies without relying on sound science."11

Americans have long been forced to pay a high price for EPA's
bureaucratic arrogance and scientific ineptitude in the form of
lost economic opportunity and costly regulations. But in the case
of Tony Behun and Shayne Conner, this time EPA's arrogance may
have cost lives.

John K. Carlisle is director and Michael Centrone a research
associate of The National Center for Public Policy Research's
Environmental Policy Task Force. They can be reached at [email protected]
and [email protected].